1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display device and an electronic apparatus.
2. Related Art
A mode (hereinafter, referred to as a “transverse electric field mode”) of controlling alignment of liquid crystal molecules by applying a substrate-in-plane electric field to a liquid crystal layer has been known as a mode of a liquid crystal display device. There have been also known an in-plane switching (IPS) mode and a fringe-field switching (FFS) mode depending upon the shapes of the electrodes for applying an electric field to the liquid crystal layer. Transflective liquid crystal display devices employing the transverse electric field mode have been studied.
The followings are examples of such liquid crystal display devices: JP-A-2003-344837; “A Single Gap Transflective Display using a Fringe-Field Driven Homogeneously Aligned Nematic Liquid Crystal Display,” M. O. Choi et al., SID05 DIGEST, P. 719-721 (2005); “Voltage and Rubbing Angle Dependent Behavior of the Single Cell Gap Transflective Fringe Field Switching (FFS) Mode,” Y. H. Jeong et al., SID05 DIGEST, P723-725; and “Optimization of Electrode Structure for Single Gamma in a Transflective IPS LCD”, Gak Seok Lee et al., SID05 DIGEST, P738-741.
In the transverse-electric-field mode transflective liquid crystal display devices described in the above-mentioned known documents, circular polarized light necessary for reflective black display was obtained from the liquid crystal layer in JP-A-2003-344837 and from an inner retardation layer on the lower substrate side in the reference documents of M. O. Choi et al., Y. H. Jeong et al., and Gak Seok Lee et al. However, in the methods described in the above-mentioned known documents, since the reflective black display is colored due to a wavelength dispersion characteristic of a liquid crystal material and a material of the inner retardation layer, it is difficult to obtain high contrast.
In the reference documents of M. O. Choi et al., Y. H. Jeong et al., and Gak Seok Lee et al., since the inner retardation layer is also formed in the transmissive display area, a retardation film is required for the outer surface of the substrate in optical design, thereby causing a problem that a viewing angle at the time of transmissive display is narrowed.